What Should Astronauts Eat On Their Trip to Mars?

Thanks to Homer Simpson’s experiments with zero-G ruffles, we’re all familiar with the problems of eating while in space. There’s the weightlessness issue, the problem of getting proper nutrition in a sunless tube filled with recycled air, and the thing where if you go outside to get some groceries, you die.

But what about meals on Mars? A new NASA study is trying to figure out how best to feed the astronauts who might head to the red planet as soon as 2030, which presents its own set of problems. The astronauts need enough food to last three years (Mars is far), so the astronauts will be stuck eating a strict vegetarian diet–dairy and meat just doesn’t stay good for that long. On the bright side, though, the fact that there is some gravity (though not much) on Mars means that astronauts who have already touched down on Martian dirt can cook semi-normally, and maybe even grow some of their own supplies in a hydroponic greenhouse.

An all-vegetarian, homegrown diet sounds a lot healthier than what most people on this planet eat on a daily basis! And it’s certainly a step up from the astronaut food of yore: